Will Thiel 🇦🇺🇺🇦

Someone asked me one time how many followers I had. I honestly didn't know or even how to look. I got on twitter for its original purpose: To allow me to shout my thoughts into a dark void and not at unsuspecting staff, or the delivery guy.

You've found the start of Friday's thread covering all things Ukraine, and particularly the country's fight for survival. It's Day 1486 - I'm here with a new🧵every day: it's been a long slog and we are not near the end yet.

My name is Richard Woodruff, I'm a 🇬🇧 British volunteer and I've been helping our heroes hold the front line in 🇺🇦 Ukraine for 4 years now, as a volunteer I don't get paid but still need to cover the roof over my head. I'm volunteering 17+ hours per day, 7 days per week so unfortunately don't have time for a "proper job", if you want to keep me going out here I'm trying to raise $500 a month for me to personally survive, nothing more, nothing less. If you have anything spare after donating to Ukraine and you value my work on the ground building drones and tweeting I'll leave a link in the comments below to donate, even $5 a month will make a huge difference 🫡 If you can't donate please just share or comment, it all helps 🫂

Good Morning Kyiv -Will @willthiel & Jennie @jenniesjoylab 8am Kyiv/2am EDT Then Booms & Woe!-R18+ With Mockers @OckersM & Fire Fella @NAFOFirefella 10am Kyiv/4am EDT x.com/i/spaces/1nKOL…

The Soviet Union was the only empire in history where the colonies were richer, more advanced, educated and productive than the coloniser. The center was hollow, the productive periphery did all the work. New analysis ➡️ tinyurl.com/j9fxxdp4 🧵👇

@HorveiOYVIND @TokyoTom2020 Exactly. Tom should start a thread for thoughtful, cutting but subtle digs that polite cultures can use against Trump, such as you provide, or give him an untranslatable name for Cadet Bonespurs

@willthiel @TokyoTom2020 She could have responded 100 ways like; "oh did your father or grandfather fight in that war?"

📌Tokyo Feedback 0310 am local📌 #PearlHarbor The apparent lack of overt #Japanese outrage~so far~regarding Trump’s PH comments should not be misconstrued as tacit approval; rather, it is a reflection of cultural pragmatism and the Japanese tendency toward discursive restraint. While Western media outlets and commentators justifiably have reacted with high-decibel shock and condemnation of #Trump (and angry American comment after comment here on X leading the way), the domestic atmosphere here in #Tokyo initially remains notably composed and not making a big deal about it. This doesn’t surprise me. It’s actually rather quiet. (It’s perhaps akin to reaction to a loud fart at a proper high society banquet dinner)—in an eery but predictable sense. Yes. There’s embarrassment, but they don’t want to show it nor make the situation any worse… To me that’s a lot of class. The "Surface Silence" Phenomenon In Japanese society, the absence of public protest does not equate to a lack of private disapproval. It is analytically risky to interpret silence as a "pass" when it often functions as a method of maintaining social equilibrium. Displaced Criticism Interestingly, domestic scrutiny has shifted away from Trump and toward PM #Takaichi. She will bear the brunt of it . Public sentiment appears less concerned with the external provocation and more critical of her perceived complicity, questioning her decision to engage with such rhetoric in a manner that many view as submissive or unnecessary. The question I’m hearing this hour is “why did she even go to DC in the first place at such a bad time?” Predictability and Desensitization After years of exposure to Trump’s malodorous rhetorical style, the Japanese initially appear to have reached a state of transactional familiarity and patience 我慢 with him. Because his behavior is now a known variable, it fails to elicit the "shock value" required to trigger a major media cycle in Japan. More than anything else they just wanted to keep their heads low and get the hell out of that Oval Office without either a new reciprocal tariff or a threat to remove US troops from Japan Ultimately, the discrepancy in outrage suggests that while the West views these comments through a moral or ideological prism, Japan views them through a lens of strategic management. The focus is less on the offense itself and more on the internal dignity and judgment of the Japanese representatives involved.

@TokyoTom2020 . . . and you can feel better in 🇯🇵. I mean look at the crap 🇷🇺 says about him on TV. But you're all too polite. That's not a fault though, as he will be dead and gone soon, and hopefully there is a swing toward comity. Think Mike Mansfield until then

@TokyoTom2020 Thanks Tom for the perspective. I know they won't do it, but the Japanese should start answering crude insults with well thought out subtle insults of Trump specifically and only in Japanese. Hes to stupid to get them, wont bother with translations because he's lazy. . . /1

📌🇺🇸🇯🇵 Random Thoughts on “Pearl Harbor” from Tokyo #PearlHarbor #Trump #Japan #Takaichi

@Beefeater_Fella Yep, get nukes yourself and sink any 🇨🇳 fishing vessels in your water at first sight

Many years is an overly optimistic prediction. I suggest a 49% chance it will take many lifetimes - and a 51% chance of never. Most of the damage is simply irreversible - only the foolish will ever build their defensive capabilities around a country that now denies the existence and scope of the Budapest Memorandum. Oh and China is an equally bad option. A nation that has over one million ethnics in concentration camps in 2026, and is raping the world’s oceans.

@noclador @ColbyBadhwar @WeaponScientist @FRHoffmann1 Make sure you record it for us mate

Twitter space with Colby Badhwar (@ColbyBadhwar), John Ridge (@WeaponScientist), Fabian Hoffmann (@FRHoffmann1) and me tomorrow, Friday 20 March, at 8pm Central European Time / 3pm Eastern Time. Tune in for insights about Iran, Ukraine, missiles, drones, military production etc.

@albafella1 Batter up!

Unknown technology

@FluteMagician Or maybe russia, hard to keep track of all these authoritarians on the edge

Which one? Iran or the Trump regime?

@Beefeater_Fella With the national wealth fund depleted, now draining the “banks” (oligarchs with loot that are expendable) will continue to ramp up

In 2025, the Prosecutor General's Office seized assets worth 4 trillion rubles. This is 2.5 times the annual budget of St. Petersburg and almost equal to the budget of Moscow. In 2025, the Prosecutor General's Office nearly doubled the volume of seizures; in 2024, the state received 2.4 trillion rubles.

"A worn-out bitch, a disgusting green aphid, Hitler, a stinking dog, and a zombie staggering from drugs." Dmitry Medvedev commented on his attitude towards Zelensky in literary Russian after granting Ukraine a €90 billion loan.

The chances of being killed by a goose when you're at work is low but never zero.

@TokyoTom2020 Please translate it for your Japanese friends and colleagues. We’re all in the same boat with the arsehole, but he will die soon

@willthiel Well said.

@slantchev Exactly, + Any of the munitions supplied by the 🇺🇸 to 🇺🇦 were the out of date ATACMS, DPICM, etc. that were due to be disposed of at the cost of millions of $ due to them being hazardous waste. 🇺🇸 still has about 900 ATACMS they cannot use due to expiry but 🇺🇦 would gladly take

Trump is, again, lying about shortages of ammunition for the war against Iran due to some imaginary supplies to Ukraine. Here are some facts: The kinds of weapons we are using to strike Iran were NEVER sent to Ukraine: PrSM (entered service in 2024), LUCAS drones (brand new), Tomahawks (Trump talked about sending some, never did), and of course B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, F-22 Raptors, and F-35s -- obviously none were ever transferred to Ukraine. The only weapons one might plausibly refer to would be ATACMS: the entire stock we deigned to send Ukraine was about 50 rounds (we had used 800 in the opening days of the Iraq invasion). The US used over 20 weapons systems to hit over 1,000 targets simultaneously during the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury. An estimated 300 Tomahawks were used and the Pentagon ordered... 57 new ones in the current fiscal year. There have been no deliveries of THAAD interceptors since 2023 and no new orders were placed this year. The military will get 39 in 2027, six years after ordering them. If we are running short on ammunition, it's because the people ordering this war did not plan adequately for contingencies and spent like drunken sailors, not because of our (really nonexistent for the past year) aid to Ukraine. Our big problem is that right now, we are still using extremely expensive systems like Patriots ($3-4 million per missile) and NASAMS/AMRAAM interceptors ($0.8-1.2 million per missile) to combat mass-produced $20,000 Shahed drones. This asymmetric exchange ratio between offense and defense is what kept analysts at night during the Cold War and why eventually defense systems would be scrapped for being too easily overwhelmed by numbers despite being technologically superior. Ukraine has been fighting and innovating precisely to deal with the asymmetric offense capabilities of Russia for years, and they have learned how to do it. But when they offered to help us last year, the Trump administration arrogantly brushed them aside. Now we are squandering premier weapons designed to stop ballistic missiles on cheap drones. And we can't keep doing it no matter how wealthy we are. Missiles take months, sometimes years, to make, while drones can be mass produced in weeks. You lose wars not when the offense peaks --- as the current bombing afficionados at the White House have you believe with their nonstop meming about raining destruction on Iran -- but when your defense capacity is stretched to its limits and cannot cope with things that keep coming at it.

@ChuckPfarrer @OSINTua Cross that T baby! Love your work orcs.

@OSINTua Kriegsforscher-- thought you’d like this map!

Today Russians attacked near Lyman. With the help of drones, Ukrainian infantry brigades destroyed 2 tanks, 5 APCs (BTR-82AT and BTR-70M), 5 BMP-3, 2 BMP-2, and more than 40 ATVs(!). A decent number of IFVs were stopped with the help of remotely placed mines. Massacre. We knew that they were planning to attack. Everyone was prepared. Two days ago, at Porkovsk direction, the 6th tank regiment attacked and lost 3 BMP-2, 1 tank, and approximately 10 ATVs. A lot of other equipment and personnel were lost near other villages at Pokrovsk direction. Spring exacerbation?

@Tavrian_Farmer WTF is wrong with you people? We will remember. @ICRC @RedCross @RedCrossEU @UN @UNHumanRights @UNHCR @UNICEF @WHO @UN_OCHA @IOM_UN @vonderleyen @NATO @EU_Commission @EmmanuelMacron @Bundeskanzler @amnesty @hrw @BBCWorld @CNN @Reuters @nytimes @guardian

We were screaming. Tagging everyone. Begging. And nothing happened. Oleshky and other villages on the left bank of Kherson region are still quietly dying. Blockade since mid-February. No food is being delivered. Supplies have run out. Human bodies lie near the morgue for weeks. Burial is impossible — dozens of permits and humiliation required. People are begging for a safe humanitarian corridor, but they’re even afraid to speak openly — the occupation punishes for less. My post was seen by more than 80 thousand people. Ordinary people were worried: Ukrainians, Europeans, Americans — they were sharing, crying, raging, tagging organizations over and over again. They wrote “this is genocide”, “don’t forget Ukraine”, “how can Europe allow this?”. @jurgen_nauditt even pointed out that the nearest NATO city is just 410 km away. And those who could actually do something? @ICRC @RedCross @RedCrossEU @UN @UNHumanRights @UNHCR @UNICEF @WHO @UN_OCHA @IOM_UN @vonderleyen @ZelenskyyUa @SecBlinken @NATO @EU_Commission @EmmanuelMacron @Bundeskanzler @amnesty @hrw @BBCWorld @CNN @Reuters @nytimes @guardian @dw_news @AlJazeera @Euronews Silence. Complete, criminal silence. Not a single tweet, statement, press release, not even “we are concerned”, “we are monitoring”. Nothing. They write about other crises, issue beautiful words about peace and inclusion — but not about this. Not about Europeans starving on their own continent while the world watches. We achieved zero result. No one heard us. No corridor, no aid, no pressure on the occupiers, no media noise. Just… nothing. This tragedy only touches ordinary people — those who still have a heart. Politicians, organizations, “humanitarians” — they don’t care unless it’s profitable or fits their plan. If you’re reading this — don’t scroll past. Repost if it hurts. Tag them again. Ask why they are ignoring people who are dying…?! People are dying right now. And the world chooses not to see. Don’t stay silent.